David Cantwell writes:

Porter Wagoner was buried last Thursday. I attended the funeral, which took place at the Grand Ole Opry house and was open to the public, with Living in Stereo’s good friend Barry Mazor. It was an appropriate setting, as Wagoner had not long ago celebrated fifty years on the Opry and had been the face of the organization for nearly a quarter century.

The funeral was not as well attended as I might have predicted, though most of the Opry cast was present, including such country music luminaries as George Jones, Jack Greene, Jim Ed Brown, Patty Loveless, Ricky Skaggs, Vince Gill, and Marty Stuart. Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood flew in to pay their respects, too, as did Wagoner’s one-time protege and longtime friend Dolly Parton.

The minister leading the service, Dr. Jerry Sutton of the Two Rivers Baptist Church in Nashville, preached a bit of fire and brimstone, telling us that Porter left this earth ready to meet Christ and recieve his eternal reward while also encouraging all present to accept Jesus today, right there, or suffer the hellish consequences. As this was god-fearing Nashville, I suspect he may specifically have had Barry and me in mind.

The music was lovely, and more forgiving. Stuart and his Superlatives offered a gorgeous “Precious Lord Take My Hand.” Oak Ridge Boy Duane Allen performed a powerful southern gospel rendition of Wagoner’s own “When I Sing for Him,” backed the Opry’s Carol Lee Singers, and Gill, Skaggs and Loveless sang “Go Rest High on that Mountain.” At the end, Parton rose and led those present in the singing of “I Saw the Light.” Wagoner’s casket was wheeled away to a chorus of sobs.

With all of this on my mind, I wanted to share some of Wagoner’s gospel music today, and again I’ll start with a song that appeared on Wagoner’s final album, Wagonmaster. Like so many of the self-penned songs on that project, the album-closing “Satan’s River” (sometimes called “Satan’s Got a River”) was a song Wagoner had recorded before. In fact, he’d recorded it a couple times. First, in 1973, with Dolly, and again in 2005 for one of the four fine and surprisingly hard-rocking gospel albums he cut for the Gusto/King label in the last years of his life.

Of course, Wagoner had a long history of singing country gospel. One of his earliest hits was the oft-recorded recitation “What Would You Do (If Jesus Came to Your House),”  a top ten hit for the The Thin Man from West Plains in 1956. But he’s moralistic there in a way he tended not to be, at least on record. Empathy and generosity were more typical of his gospel approach. As on “Soul of a Convict,” one of his finest recitations and certainly his most harrowing, which not only takes the side of mistreated and ostracized prisoners but predicts that some very warm spots in hell will be reserved for the guards who beat them.

In the mid 1960s, Wagoner teamed with southern gospel legends the Blackwood Brothers on two Grammy winning gospel albums. The first of those, The Grand Old Gospel, included another of Wagoner’s most moving recitations, “My Last Two Tens.” that track is included below, as are two cuts from the following year’s sequel lp, More Grand Old Gospel: ”I’ll Fly Away,” written by Wagoner’s Ozark brother Albert Brumley, and “Rank Strangers.” Of course even many of his best known secular hits had something of a gospel twist to them. Indeed, that’s true of the two numbers most associated with him, “A Satisfied Mind” and “Green, Green Grass of Home.”

When I spoke with Wagoner for my No Depression story, he told me that “When I Sing for Him” was his favorite of all the songs he’d written. It was first recorded, near as I can tell, by Dolly in 1972, and he first cut it himself in 1979 for the P&J label. He rerecorded it  in ‘05.

Finally, I wanted to share the “blood-soaked battlefield” of “Peace on Earth Begins Today,” and “Out of the Silence (Came a Song),” one of the first Parton songs Wagoner did and one of the coolest sounding records he ever cut. It combines the big-hearted sensibility of his recitations with another of those stirring and souflul studio arrangments that dominated his production work in the late 60s and early 70s.

I love this music. I’m not a believer, but I do believe in people who are struggling with the pain and limitations of this world, who are hoping for transcendence, and who sing their hopes to music that gets at what it means to be human. And I guess for our purposes today, that’s just a way of saying that while I don’t believe in a God, I continue to believe in Porter Wagoner.  

Porter Wagoner “When I Sing for Him” and “Satan’s Got a River” from 18 Grand Old Gospel Hits (Gusto/King, 2005)

Porter Wagoner & Dolly Parton “Satan’s River” from We Found It (RCA, 1973)

Dolly Parton “When I Sing for Him” from My Favorite Songwriter, Porter Wagoner (RCA, 1972)

Porter Wagoner “Soul of a Convict” from Soul of a Convict (and Other Great Prison Songs) (RCA, 1967)

Porter Wagoner “Out of the Silence (Came a Song)” from non-charting RCA single, 1967

Porter Wagoner “Peace on Earth Begins Today” from the album Me and My Boys (RCA, 1969)

Porter Wagoner & the Blackwood Brothers Quartet “My Last Two Tens” from The Grand Old Gospel (RCA, 1966)

Porter Wagoner & the Blackwood Brothers “Rank Strangers” and “I’ll Fly Away” from More Grand Old Gospel (RCA, 1967)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 10:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.